ZadekpediaWretched Refuse: The Political Economy of Immigration and Institutions is a book co-authored by Alex Nowrasteh and Benjamin Powell, discussed by Bob Zadek with each co-author across three episodes of The Bob Zadek Show. Zadek introduced the book to listeners as an attempt to help them understand immigration “factually and dispassionately,” and framed immigration itself as a topic that moved from privately held bias into legislation beginning in the 1880s The Immigration Crisis in Context (2021).
The book and its argument
Zadek described the book as co-written by Nowrasteh and Powell, and identified Nowrasteh as Director of Immigration Studies at Cato The Immigration Crisis in Context (2021). Powell, introduced as Executive Director of the Free Market Institute and a professor of economics at Texas Tech University, said the book contains no Q.E.D. and proves nothing; its purpose is to take seriously what he called the “new economic case for immigration restrictions,” associated with Harvard economist George Borjas and Paul Collier, and to investigate it empirically The Economics of Immigration (2022).
Powell summarized that case as the fear that immigrants bring with them the beliefs and formal or informal institutions responsible for their origin countries being poor, and that these could change the rules governing a destination country in a way that makes it less productive. His intuitive illustration: Cuban immigrants fleeing socialist Cuba to Florida bringing pro-socialist ideas that turned Florida socialist, so that the Cubans would not see the income increase from leaving Cuba and Floridians would become poorer. Powell said the book investigates stocks and flows of immigrants across countries and case studies including corruption and freedoms, and previewed the result as no evidence for the thesis, and quite often the opposite The Economics of Immigration (2022).
Nowrasteh gave the same finding in the earlier episode: the book, published by Cambridge University Press, examined the relationship between more immigration and more socialist or big-government policies in the United States and around the world, and found either no relationship at all or, in some cases, that more immigration leads to more economic freedom, more representative government and more prosperity. He called the idea that immigrants vote for socialists a pernicious stereotype, cited a swing of Hispanic and naturalized immigrant voters toward President Donald Trump in the 2020 election, and said that historically the United States government grew the most and fastest when immigration was most closed, from about 1930 to 1970, while growing more slowly before 1930 and since 1970 The Immigration Crisis in Context (2021).
Numbers and the market
Asked whether there is a calculable number of immigrants beyond which the country is worse off, Nowrasteh answered that the market regulates that: if there are no more jobs, if the economy is doing poorly, if land prices are too high, people will not come. He compared it to asking whether there is a theoretical amount of steel production that becomes bad for the economy — yes, absolutely, but the point is determined by prices and supply and demand, not by bureaucrats or politicians, who will never be able to identify or enforce it. He called this one of the most powerful arguments for a laissez-faire immigration system The Immigration Crisis in Context (2021). Zadek added that this had happened a few years earlier, when a recession and absent jobs caused immigration naturally to stop, which he attributed to the invisible hand operating cross-border The Immigration Crisis in Context (2021).
Ellis Island and the “legalism fallacy”
In the 2022 episode Powell objected to the phrase “open borders” as loaded, noting that people paying $5,000 to $10,000 to coyotes to be smuggled across the southern border is itself evidence the border is not open. He preferred to speak of Ellis Island migration policy or free migration, meaning no blanket quantitative restrictions by origin country, while allowing basic qualitative checks for contagious disease and known criminals or terrorists. He noted that Ellis Island policy allowed most people in the world to legally come to the United States, whereas now almost everybody in the world is legally prohibited from migrating there — a return to law-and-order immigration without restricting numbers The Economics of Immigration (2022). Zadek described Ellis Island as the first stop of immigrants arriving by boat, where officials looked for disease and criminality, and called it a placeholder for open borders The Economics of Immigration (2022).
The 2023 episode, with Nowrasteh, was billed around the “legalism fallacy” and the historical roots of American immigration law, described as having evolved from racial animosity into a complex, restrictive system American anxiety about immigration is unwarranted. Here’s why. (2023). Zadek opened by asking whomever he speaks with which they oppose more, the illegal or the immigration — if all immigration were legal, would they be content American anxiety about immigration is unwarranted. Here’s why. (2023).
Across episodes: the same question, two co-authors
The same question — whether immigration threatens the destination country’s institutions — is argued in the 2021 episode by Nowrasteh and in the 2022 episode by Powell, each presenting the book’s empirical finding that the restrictionist case fails. The 2023 episode returns with Nowrasteh, shifting the frame from institutions to the legalism fallacy and the historical roots of immigration law. The episodes show no development in the underlying thesis between the earlier and later treatments; what changes is the co-author making the argument and the emphasis of the framing.